I have recently had several conversations about this, about how much space I take up. Almost all of them take place over text, too, as they often come with a worry that synchronous communication might be too much of a demand. Some of them take place between my partners and I speaking frankly about how we interact with each other. Others take place between other versions of me, characters I role play or those that I write, each expressing their own anxiety.
Over the years, I have thankfully fallen out of the habit of asking whether or not I am a burden, of feeling like a burden.
-What I haven’t done is relinquish the feeling that there are bounds around me. There is a barrier that marks the end of me, a sphere of influence that has a point where it stops.
+What I haven’t done is relinquish the feeling that there are bounds around me. There is a barrier that marks the end of me, a sphere of influence that has a point where it stops. I don’t know if anyone else sees it. I doubt it.
+I see it, though. It’s always there. A little shield, a screen, a forcefield, glimmering and translucent. It’s the point where the space that I take up ends.
++I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead, you must absorb them, admit them into your memory.\footnote{\cite[8]{timewar}}
+Will you cut off, leaving my note to spin its fractal math inside you?\footnote{\cite{14}}
+
((How much space I take up))